Fellowship Bible Church   

There is so much to be said about John Cowen O’Hair that a brief summary like this will never feel sufficient. I’d refer anyone curious about O’Hair to this wonderful biography put together by Bryan Ross. We also have a bio of O'Hair in this Origins of the Grace Movement article and also in this 1988 article from Truth Magazine. For me, he’s one of my favorite figures in the grace movement. He’s a man who makes Bible study so much fun, a man who never fails to inspire me, a man who, through the grace of the God, became such a wonderful evangelist, as well as an able and creative Bible teacher. He had the country's first nationwide radio station called WPCC, which stood for three things - We Preach Christ Crucified, We Proclaim Christ's Coming, and We Practice Christ's Commands). So much fun! I loved his fun style, too. I loved how he said that “Israel's blindness was for a season and for a reason” or how he called the progressive revelation of Scripture “God’s installment plan.”

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Also fascinating to me also is O’Hair’s struggles in the 1930’s about the origin of the church in which he moved away from the traditional view that the church began at Pentecost to a mid-Acts position as expounded by E.W. Bullinger. Then he felt he had to combat accusations of “Bullingerism” with bold pamphleteering, which are such great reads. I loved how he responded to Dr. H.A. Ironside’s “Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth” with his booklet "Art Thou He That Troubleth Israel?"

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We’re not going to post all of O’Hair’s voluminous literature here, as the Berean Bible Society already has a thorough online library, and we wouldn’t want to steal their thunder. However, we’re happy to share a collection of books and booklets we love, as well as our exclusive chart by J.C. O’Hair, which a member of our church found in a flea market! It’s the size of a poster. We folded the chart into sections, scanned them, and pieced them together so that we might be able to share with you our digital copy. We also have 4 newly discovered J.C. O’Hair messages that we converted to mp3's from vintage cassette tapes courtesy of Dave Siegmann at Berean Bible Church. We turned one of those messages into a fun video.

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-Joel Hayes, Associate Pastor